Montaine snorted, ‘I think I’ll go for harshly, meself. Bein’ helpful now and then ain’t nothing to brag about, bein’ helpful ain’t something what you can, what you can, what’s the word?’ he wiggled his fingers as he tried to scrape together whatever high lexis he has gleaned from Calbert, and his recent time spent up at the school, ‘Quantify! Tha’ssit isn’t it? It ain’t something you can count up. If you think, ah I done some charity today, that’s me in the people’s good books for another season, that ain’t right. You can’t quantify charity, them that try and do, they see it as a commodity, like money, an’ that just ain’t right,’
The glassworker peered into his empty glass. His accent was returning with a vengeance though whether it was due to the alcohol’s effect or his own relaxation around someone who seemed just as out of place as he himself, he couldn’t figure out. But his acquaintance, the scholar, had yet to compliment the earthy charm the other guests had so patronisingly commented upon and it gave him the chance to feel less trapped by this new, foreign territory.
‘Where you from, if’n you don’t mind me asking? ‘Cause I know you ain’t from round these parts, you don’ talk like a harbour boy, rich or poor,’ Monty squinted at the scholar, ‘An’ it’s subtle but there’s something in that voice o’ yours I don’ recognise all that much, so the way I figure it, you ain’t sailed here, not from your home anyways, which would mean you’re from inland, over the mountains,’ Monty smiled and nodded, satisfied with his reasoning, ‘That right? Don’t often get people in through the pass, usually they come by sea, see? So I figure you’re either from a long way off, from some place I ain’t never even heard of, or you’re from inland, am I right?’